Serena Williams' husband claps back at Stephen A. Smith over Super Bowl Drake diss controversy
Sports commentator Stephen A. Smith did not hold back when discussing Serena Williams' appearance during Kendrick Lamar's Super Bowl LIX halftime show, calling it a petty move against her ex, Drake.
Lamar's performance, which featured Samuel L. Jackson, SZA, and Mustard, included Serena as a background dancer during "Not Like Us"—a song widely seen as a diss toward Drake. Williams even broke into a Crip Walk, fueling online buzz about whether she was subtly taunting the rapper.
On ESPN's
First Take
, Smith voiced his disapproval while debating the performance with Molly Qerim, Shannon Sharpe, Dan Orlovsky, and Ryan Clark.
"If I'm married and my wife is going to join trolling her ex, go back to his a*s," Smith said. "'Cause clearly you don't belong with me. What you worried about him for and you're with me? Bye. Bye."
However, Williams' actual husband, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian quickly shut down Smith's take in a post on X (formerly Twitter):
"Some of y'all have no idea how criticized Serena was for this same dance at Wimbledon 13 years ago, and it shows…" Ohanian posted, referring to the backlash she faced for doing the Crip Walk after winning Olympic gold in 2012.
To drive his point home, Ohanian shared an old screenshot of sports commentator Jason Whitlock's past remarks, where Whitlock had slammed Serena's Wimbledon celebration stating that she deserved to be criticised, should have immediately apologised and that "Her dance was akin to cracking a tasteless, X-rated joke inside a church."
His most pointed response came in the form of a video clip from Kendrick Lamar's set, where Samuel L. Jackson sarcastically exclaims: "Oh no, no! Too loud! Too reckless! Too… ghetto."
The satire was not lost on Ohanian, who used it to emphasize the hypocrisy in how Serena has been judged throughout her career.
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